Once again, it has done the best it could with a bad pool. The 1st, 4th and 5th best rated players were placed together against the 2nd and 3rd best rated players. Unfortunately, the 4th best was almost as good as the 3rd best and the best player was astronomically better than the second best (you).

To illustrate this problem, consider B590257 2 on Shimmershore v1.0. I had an 11.2% chance of success (matchmaker may have thought it was a bit higher at the time). Atostic's competitive rating is "only" 19% higher than mine, but in a head to head he's well out of my league and as is often observed, a 150-200WHR gap is almost insurmountable. The discrepency between 1st and 2nd highest rated players is bigger in this game.

This may have been a more even game with just ffc and either gold or [I]am on one side playing the other 3. No doubt there is some maths that can adjust for large skill gaps instead of just ranking people by their absolute numbers, though I don't know what it is. However, it will still be limited by the pool available.

A lot better matches could be made if the balancer was allowed to kick out people. But as long as you insist on a 3v2 where the best player would beat the worst player in 99% of games, good balance will be a hard thing to get.

The matchmaker could solve this issue, but as it seem the version where everyone pools in one big battle is preferred.